horst
Highly Optimized Radio Scanning Tool
Platforms: Linux · Last verified September 6, 2026
horst is a small, lightweight IEEE802.11 WLAN analyzer with a text interface. Its basic function is similar to tcpdump, Wireshark or Kismet, but it’s much smaller and shows different, aggregated information which is not easily available from other tools. It is made for debugging wireless LANs with a focus on getting a quick overview instead of deep packet inspection and has special features for Ad-hoc (IBSS) mode and mesh networks. It can be useful to get a quick overview of what’s going on all wireless LAN channels and to identify problems.
Only use this tool against systems you own or are explicitly authorized to test — see the disclaimer.
Getting started
See the official Kali tool page and upstream homepage linked above for installation and usage details.